“Oklahoma City – With a powerful offensive display, Oklahoma defeated Kansas in just five innings to progress from the Big 12 Tournament quarterfinals.
The Sooners are now set to face BYU in the semifinals on Friday at 5 p.m.
In their previous matchup with BYU, Oklahoma secured a 2-1 series win, but it wasn’t a clean sweep as BYU beat the Sooners 7-3 in the second game of the series on April 12. This result demonstrated that BYU is capable of defeating the Sooners if Oklahoma doesn’t perform at its usual high standard. Although BYU’s win over Oklahoma State in the quarterfinals was seen as an upset, Oklahoma must play its best to beat a team fighting for a spot in postseason play.”
We learned a lot,” Oklahoma head coach Patty Gasso said, thinking back to the loss to BYU. “They can swing, they can play. They’re gamers. I know right now they’re fighting to get into the postseason. I would think they would make it because of their resume and some of their wins. They’re tough outs. Our pitching staff is going to have to be really good and pinpoint things because they can cover the zone really well. They hit hard. This is going to be a tough matchup. They came out and showed it against OSU. They did it to us in our series against them. We know what they’re capable of. We’re going to have to be at our best.”
The Cougars were able to record seven hits to earn a 7-2 victory over Oklahoma State on Thursday. BYU’s C. Temples pitched all seven innings, giving up seven hits while striking out six batters.
The good thing for the Sooners is they seemed to have a productive week of practice, coming off of a great offensive game against Oklahoma State on Sunday. The team is viewing it as a springboard for the tournament as they team set to go out on a ‘revenge tour’. They won’t get to take down the team (Oklahoma State) that beat them in a home-series, but they’ll be able to take down the team that took a game from them at home. That along with the drive for another championship is enough motivation.
Yeah I think Sunday was a good start but even our practices this week have just been so gritty, blue collar,” Oklahoma Co-Captain Tiare Jennings said. “We had so much more competition. We were kind of going at it back and forth, just competing with one another. But it was fun. Then coming into today I think it transferred over from the work we put in this week. So I really liked how the team responded this week. And just the energy, you can tell there’s something going on with this team right now.”
